He thought of none of these things. He thought only of the comfort and elegance; the peace, the delicate living, the delicate clothing, the congenial companionship he was going to. He was determined to have a luxurious bath, to be shaved and perfumed, to leave behind him the very dust of his past life. He resolved not to allow himself to remember Denasia. She was to be as if she never had been. He would blot out of his memory all the years she had brightened and darkened. And if any excuse can be found for him, it must be in his supposition that Denasia felt just as he did. She would be grateful to him for taking the initiative--glad to get back to her home and her people, glad to escape a life for which she must have discovered she had neither strength nor vocation. So he thought, in spite of his resolve not to think. But a man must be even more selfish and reckless than Roland was to take years of his past life and plunge them into oblivion as he would plunge a stone into mid-ocean. In spite of the novelty of his situation, of his delight with his quiet, handsome room, the thought of Denasia would enter where it was forbidden to enter, and he could not help wondering how she would receive his letter, and what steps she would take in consequence of it. Denasia came home weary and disappointed. She had had a long, silent wait for the person she expected to see, and finally been compelled to accept the fact that he was not coming into town. She was heart-sick, and the paltry loss of the car fare was an addition to her anxiety. That the room was empty and the baby crying did not in any way astonish her. She understood from it that Roland had come home and dismissed the landlady, and then wearied of his watch and gone out again, leaving the child to sleep or to weep as it felt inclined to do. Her first action was to lift it from its bed, nurse and comfort it, and rock it to sleep on her breast. Then her eyes wandered from her child to a letter lying on the table. The circumstance roused no interest in her mind. She knew from its general appearance that it had been put there by Roland, and it was by no means the first time he had left the child with a letter containing some excuse which he thought valid enough to satisfy Denasia. She looked at it with a little contempt. She expected to find it assert that some one had called for him or had sent him a message involving a possible engagement, and she knew the whole affair would resolve itself into some plausible story, which she would either have to accept or else deny, with the certain addition of a coolness or a quarrel. So the letter lay until she had put off and away her street costume. Then she took it in her hand and sat down by the open window to read the contents. They were short and very much to the point: